I am on my way to being the best auntie ever or the worst sister-in-law that ever lived. Possibly both.

I am making my 2-year-old niece a plushy for her birthday. She is very hands-on baby and wants to help with everything and be involved in the center of attention. A few weeks after her birthday everyone is going dipnetting. She is two and can not help with dip netting or do anything but watch.

So I am making her a toy salmon. And I am making it so she can filet it. It has guts. It has bones. It is all one piece and child friendly, and I am debating using embedded magnets or velcro to hold the filets on.

She has a kitchen set with a little wooden knife at her grandparents house, who have already heard about this and think its a great idea. We are gonna teach this kid to clean and process fish. She already knows where meat comes from and she will want to get in and do what everyone else is doing which she can not do because the fish are only slightly smaller than she is.

So, salmon plushy

BTW, I make plushies by winging it. Actually I make all my art by winging it. If you would like to comment on the fine art of making shit up as you go, feel free. If you wanna ask for a pattern, uhh,

Progress! On to bones! On to guts! Be the unhinged fairy godmother!

One sad looking headless inside out fishy 🐟

And the much happier right-side out headless fishy 😄

I have weird priorities for this fish. I want the gill plates to be shaped like a real fish so she can learn how to pick a fish up correctly and develop the fine motor skills to do so. But thats turning out to be a bitch and a half.

Also I have no googly eyes anywhere in the house and thus far I've been able to do this entire project with material on hand. I've used 4 old tee shirts and a pair of jeans, but I will need to buy velcro and eyeballs.

the head/jaw/gill plate got a lil wonky and honestly I'd like to take it apart and try again but I'm running out of time.

But we have eyeballs! We have guts! We have a gill pocket and oddly attached pectoral fins! I just need to get ahold of some white velcro for a spine and I'll have a completed plushy.

I'm actually quite proud of the velcro arrangement I've come up with, because to peel it apart with the toy knife she'll be mimicking the motion of actually fileting a fish.

He's done! He's adorable! He's filetable! I had to hide my phone from my niece because she wanted to see the pictures I was showing her grandma.

I think I may try and make another one that's less child friendly and more accurate, because I had a great time solving topology problems, but I did sacrifice alot of anatomical details in the name of practical toy construction. I like what it says as an art peice, the junstiposition of a medium associated with simplified design and the details biological reality. There's also a fun parallel that comes up when sewing and food processing (specifically fish processing) are both pretty heavily gendered labor, but when you put them together they almost cancel each other out conceptually.

Oh I love this! Such a great way to teach these important skills to a little one.

That’s so cool OP! When my first kid was little we used to have Li Ziqi videos on sometimes, and one day I found them making Fish Soup by whacking at a stuffed toy robin with a dinosaur-shaped comb, so that indicates how many young children would take an interest in this.

Had a family wedding to attend and wanted to look my dapper best. I purchased a couple of bolts of this brushed cotton herringbone with the intention of making a three piece suit out of it.

I already had the pants that I made a couple years ago (interestingly for another wedding) so I decided to level up and add welt pockets to a vest.

Did a test run on scrap, cut out my pattern, sewed in my darts, and added the first pocket. Isn't it beautiful?

Reader, she should have stopped there.

I added the pocket to the other side, placing it the same distance from the top of the dart, not the bottom of the vest.

Grievous error that I didn't notice until I put it on after buttons, buttonholes, and topstitching. The pockets don't line up.

Curses.

So I did what any sane and normal person who is most certainly not under a deadline or anything and obsessed about it for a day before making a whole new vest, this one with one waist pocket and one chest pocket.

Final look, complete with pocket watch and purchased jacket (because I'm still trying to fit a jacket pattern).

I cannot emphasize how much I need a haunted castle to run around in so this can billow dramatically behind me.

Embroidery machine test project completed.

First I had to figure out what the best substrate for the results I want. I want to make a drapery shawl like thing.

So test one: tulle.

It worked okay but it distorted like whoa. No good way to secure it to the stabilizer though. 5/10

Test 2: organza

A little too stiff for my liking but it did stay in the hoop the best. 7/10

Test 3: chiffon

Love the drape but I had the same problem with distortion...until I spot tacked it down to the stabilizer with washable glue. Bingo.

Progress shots. I couldn't help the bisexual thread. It just jumped into my cart. Honest.

Final results:

All in all good practice and a wearable result. Now I'm off to make a frilly victorian nightgown for a larp because I'm that kind of extra. I think I'll embroider the yoke for funsies.

Making of The Gentlethem Pirate: The Stays

Since I screwed up the pants the first go round and had to wait for the new fabric to wash and dry I started on the stays.

I used the most excellent Custom Corset Generator from ElizabethanCostume.net and some alphanumeric paper (that I discovered wasn't accurately spaced to an inch like it was supposed to be) to create my pattern and transferred it to sturdier Ikea paper after a quick mockup.

The elder niblet decided on this burgundy/gold brocade and I was able to find a remnant of burgundy duck canvas for the lining.

Since I had the pattern and time I was able to order bones to the right length from Wawak.com. I marked and sewed all the boning channels (by machine because I don't hate myself). I also opted for grommets over hand binding eyelets in case they outgrow it.

However, I couldn't completely avoid hand sewing since I didn't leave enough room for the bones to not be in the binding so I spent the evening sewing down bias tape.

Et voila, stays and a shirt done.

Tomorrow we tackle pants 2.0.

The Shirt

real actual photo of me.

b-

bernadette banner

yes!!!!!!

Crafty Advice Owl  (Voice of sewers of plush and cosplay)

(Link to a blank, make your own!)

This is so true, it hurts. 

A moment of silence for all the hell we have caused Taylor

The bat sewing pattern is now available :) (And just as a note, most of the fabric for my bats came from Joann Fabric if you’d like to purchase something similar) You can buy this pattern on Etsy or Craftsy

If you’ve never heard of craftsy, I highly recommend you check it out. Unlike many other sites, they don’t charge a fee for listing or take a cut of the sale, allowing the designer to receive more of their profit for their hard work.

by medlibrarian

ok, so while i see this, i’m gonna say something about this super quick.

so, women get shit for crafting, which i have never understood.  i think in sansa’s case, it’s something along the lines of “LOOK, YOUR SISTER IS RUNNING AROUND BRANDISHING A SWORD.  GO DO THAT.” or some bs like that, because for some reason, that’s more valuable/defies gender norms or what have you.  i’m not going to go into comparing arya and sansa.  they both rock in their own spheres.  this is not an arya-bashing post.  nope.  not at all.  she can rock out with her bad self. but, back to the point, doing that completely undermines the fact that sansa’s badass embroidery/dress-making skillz are just as relevant to her character arc/trajectory as arya’s romping around with weapons.  arya’s on her way to being an assassin.  right? yes.  so, fighting=useful for her career choice, if you will.

guess what? so is sewing and dressmaking for sansa.

why? well, the answer might surprise you, especially if you are not a crafter.  (here kicks in the part of me that’s been knitting since i was 7, and embroidering since i was 10.)

sansa is not going to be a warrior.  she was never going to be.  if she lives long enough to turn into a badass (please, grrm? please?) she will be a political one, who has learned how to move through society from her time married to tyrion and living with littlefinger.  (i think most people can sort of agree on that fact?  if not, come talk to me.  i like discussion!)  but what do political badasses need?  what makes tyrion, littlefinger, and varys so much better than pycelle, cersei, and ned when it comes to playing the game of thrones?

seeing one little piece as part of a larger picture, and being able to turn that little detail into something else, to manipulate it, to grow it. and broskis, that’s what sewing and embroidery and needlework are.  they are literally making something out of nothing, seeing how one tiny stitch will fit into a larger pattern and making it do exactly what you want it to do.

now wait, i hear you cry, aren’t you extrapolating?  isn’t that a bit of a stretch, to say that sansa’s embroidery skillz are something that shows how good she is at being a creative and astute thinker?

no.  i’m not.  as i mentioned earlier, i’ve been knitting for years, and embroidering for nearly as long.  to deviate from a given pattern can prove disastrous if you aren’t resourceful, meaning that you have to rip back hours and hours and hours of hard work.  (don’t believe me? here’s a post i wrote about it in a fit of agony and depression.  lace work knitting is hard because it requires full focus, and if you make a tiny mistake, you don’t just have to rip back, you have to pay attention as you rip back, because otherwise you’ll overshoot and have no way of figuring out where you are, or if you’ve just made everything so bad you might as well just start again.) anywho, if you don’t see how things fit together, you’re largely fucked, and that’s with a pattern.  is sansa using a pattern? probably not.  why? because middle ages, that’s why.  she’s probably just hanging out thinking “ooh, this bird might look pretty.  i think i shall embroider it.” and BAM. embroidered bird.  she’s got vision, she’s got creativity, and what is it that we look for in potential leaders/badasses/queens? vision & creativity? ah yes!

I’m going to take a moment to casually reblog this from myself, in light of what happened on the Show this past weekend, where she made herself a new dress.  There are some elements to the post I would add to, rephrase, etc. but I’m not going to in this reblog.  I imagine you can guess what they are, based on how I blog.  I’m also not going to comment on the making of the new dress.  I think other people are doing it far more eloquently.  

But here—have some thoughts about sewing and crafting and knitting and Sansa.